Are There Watermelons With White Flesh?

All watermelons have green rinds, regardless of their interior color.

Cutting into a watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) to discover snowy-white pulp instead of the deep-red ambrosia you were expecting might be unsettling. White-fleshed watermelons, however, can be as juicy and delicious as their more common red-fleshed relatives. The biggest difference between the two comes from a single phytonutrient responsible for the pink or red coloring of several fruits.

The Lycopene Factor

The magic ingredient that makes watermelons and tomatoes red and grapefruits and guavas pink is lycopene. All watermelons go through a white stage early in their development, but the red-fleshed cultivars produce increasing amounts of lycopene as they ripen. Those with the highest concentration of this nutritious pigment have the reddest flesh. Even when completely ripe, white-fleshed watermelon cultivars contain only traces of lycopene.

A Ton of Brix

Three of the most widely available white-fleshed watermelon cultivars are small, averaging about 8 to 10 pounds. They're also sweet to extremely sweet, according to the Brix scale use to measure fruits' sugar content. "Japanese Cream-Fleshed Suika" (Citrullus lanatus "Japanese Cream-Fleshed Suika") is ready to harvest in less than 12 weeks, with a very respectable 8.5 Brix score. Next, with an 8.9 score and 86-day average ripening time, is "Cream of Saskatchewan" (Citrullus lanatus "Cream of Saskatchewan"). "White Wonder" (Citrullus lanatus "White Wonder") needs about 93 days to ripen fully. At a whopping 9.9 on the Brix scale, it's more than worth the wait.